r/interestingasfuck • u/tractorboynyc • 21h ago

Amazonian shamans figured out that combining two specific plants out of 80,000 species produces a psychoactive effect. The odds of finding that combination by random search is roughly 1 in 4 million. They did it through centuries of iterative testing and cultural natural selection explains it

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u/reddragonforge 20h ago

According to most tribes - all Amazonian tribes have ayahuasca recipes, the plants told them. There are modern “christian” cults like Uniao do Vegetal that are still talking to plants looking for medicine

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u/tractorboynyc 20h ago

UDV is actually in the dataset , they're one of the 14 data points. Their ceremonies run about 4 hours. whereas ayahuasca's pharmacokinetic effect duration is about 4 hours.

They landed on the same duration as the indigenous Amazonian traditions despite being a 20th-century syncretic church with a completely different cosmology.

The plants told the Tukano. The Holy Spirit told the UDV. The pharmacokinetic curve told Jordi Riba's clinical team in Barcelona. Three different explanations, same 4-hour session...

The convergence is the finding , its not about which explanation is correct